(but where’s the yeast and flour?!)

Pasta

Pesto

Crinkly Cabbage used in life drawing class

Mix together and cook

Two years into marriage and a mutual acknowledgement that I was the main cook in the house, my man declared that he was going to cook me a birthday meal.

‘What do you want for your birthday meal?’ he said excited by the prospect of spoiling me.

‘Well my favourite….’ (which was indeed a meal that is almost impossible to spoil) ‘…is pesto pasta. Just pure unadulterated pasta with pesto sauce, nothing else’, I was making it clear, pesto and pasta alone, on a plate was my choice for the night!

The night of my birthday my man, good to go; pesto sauce acquired, French stick to accompany, pasta sitting in cupboard, saucepan with boiling water, began his loving act….there was nothing that could ruin this meal….. so I thought. I sat in the lounge content in the knowledge that dinner was going to be tasty. A little time passed and I could hear the sound of chopping coming from the kitchen. I wondered ‘mmm what could that be, there is no chopping required for this simple meal?’ I looked through to the kitchen and cried, (not literally at this point) ‘What you chopping?’

A convenient hearing impairment that one develops when not wanting to answer a question pursued, creating a long pause before he reluctantly replied,

‘Cabbage’.

‘Erm…..do you think I can have mine without cabbage honey, I just like it on it’s own?’ I carefully asked, not wanting to knock his thoughtfulness or effort in cooking me a birthday meal.

‘Well we have to use it up so I thought I’d mix it in with the pasta, it’s the crinkly one I used in my life drawing class the other week.’

‘Yep, I know it needs using but I would really rather have mine without it if you don’t mind’, I said. I had to be firm about this, my birthday meal was about to be contaminated with crinkly cabbage.

‘Ok, if that’s what you want, I’ll have it with mine’, he said rather put out that his idea had been rejected.

The cabbage got a little burnt, so didn’t smell good. The pasta and pesto meal however was very nice. The pesto, pasta and cabbage meal was something that should never have been conceived. He chomped away briefly before deciding ‘This is not good’.

‘Well, never mind you made me a lovely birthday meal anyway’, I said gratefully as I kissed his cheek. It was not all a disaster.

Ingredients:

Anything of edible content

Cabbage

Casserole, leave to go off then reheat.

My man had made the casserole the day before. We hadn’t enjoyed it much, little flavour and substance; cabbage really isn’t a casserole ingredient. With lunch time approaching, we had put the ‘Casseroler’ on and the smell of heated food emanated through the house. My nose had doubts to the edibility of the food as the smell didn’t entice the appetite.

‘Do you want some lunch?’ I cried up the stairs.

‘Ok’, he said.

I got the bowls ready and lifted the lid of the casserole. The steam wafted up my nose and hit the back of the throat. My doubts seemed justified, as the contents of the casserole smelt a little pungent but not wanting to seem picky, as it was food after all and not wanting to knock the meal before tasting it, decided to test it before dishing it out. Tentatively taking a spoonful of the juice and an odd floating piece of carrot I leant over the sink and sipped the brew. What followed was fearsome. The taste of pure acid stripped my mouth and constricted my throat. I spat out what had gone in and started retching over the sink. After minutes of gagging and spitting away the taste, with eyes watering and neck strain, I called up hoarsely ‘It’s not edible’. He descended the stairs and cried ‘What is that horrible smell, it is spreading upstairs?!’

‘The casserole…it has turned to stomach acid!’ I said as I grabbed a tissue from the table in the lounge to wipe my eyes.

‘Urgh! It must have gone off’, he said as he picked up the lid and had a look and hastily returned the lid to block the smell in.

‘I’ll get rid of this’, he quickly decided and picked up the dish and headed for the back door. He carried it with two tea towels as far from his body as possible, like some type of nuclear fall-out and walked to the garden, plonking it on the garden table.

‘I’ll get a bag and sort it out later when it’s cool’, he said returning to the kitchen. 

‘I hope the whole neighbourhood is not gassed with the smell! It’s like we’ve developed a new kind of chemical warfare’, I exclaimed.

‘I think I’ve gone off casserole for a while’, he said.

‘Yeah, me too’. I agreed, wiping the mascara runs from my face in the mirror, thinking ‘Yep Alice Cooper look’. We didn’t have casserole for a good month after that.

Ingredients:

Anything available in the fridge

Mustard

Stock Cubes

Tin of Spicy Bean soup

Pastry 5-10kg

 Casserole the food then add to pastry

On returning from work late one Friday night my man had made his speciality meal; casserole. The simplicity of throwing whatever was available into a pot and leaving for hours unattended to brew, was a joy to him. ‘Mmmmm so what did you put in today?’ I asked genuinely pleased at the effort.

‘Oh, anything I found and a tin of soup, stock cubes and mustard,’ he replied quietly confident.

We left the brew for an hour more to thoroughly cook. The dog walked, wine open and stomachs a-rumbling, the time for casserole seemed right. He went to dish it up and shortly a groan resonated from the kitchen.

‘I don’t think I’ll have any of this’, he cried, ‘…it smells horrible. You should have the left over curry’.

‘Oh no, what went wrong?’ I asked.

‘Must be the tinned soup, it just smells funny’.

‘What a shame, you have used everything we had in this one too!’ My heart sinking; living on a tight budget became harder when all potential meals became one that was rank!

I had the curry and he snacked on a small flan. The atmosphere had somewhat deflated, as it does when a nice meal shared is spoilt.

‘I am really tired, I think I’ll go to bed early,’ I said despondently, a little disappointed that the night had gone flat and went off to have a shower.

Hair dryer off, I began to hear the sound of noisy activity coming from below in the kitchen. Wondering to myself what my man was doing, I curiously went to investigate. The scene was this: flour everywhere, a pile of dough the size of a football was being needed, the radio was blaring merrily with a comedy drama and there was a electric, mad air of experimentation. If he had turned to me and laughed like a crazy scientist, it would have been fitting.

‘I’m making a pasty with the casserole’, he smiled, ‘…shame to waste all that food’.

I looked on aghast, not knowing what to say as he rolled the dough into a gigantic flat base. I resisted saying anything critical or interfering and that the possibility of transforming the foul casserole into tasty pasties was a slim hope and so diplomatically let him get on with it, but stayed to watch in intrigue. We chatted while he lumped the casserole on to the dough base in one mass. I started to wonder if he was being literal about making ‘a pasty’, singular, avoiding the obvious that it seemed that way and thought I better add some logic here.

‘Erm…. so are you going to cut the dough into pieces and make a couple of pasties?’

‘….well, I was just going to fold this over and make one?’ he said, starting to question his decision.

I couldn’t help it, but the pasty was so enormous it would not even fit the oven and I started to smile.

‘Are you making it for some goliath being?’ I giggled.

‘Well we can cut it up, can’t we?’ he added, convinced that this would be a suitable arrangement. By this point giggles developed into laughter.

‘There may be a problem fitting it in the oven though!?’ I suggested through the hysterics.

‘Oh! Yeah I better halve it!’ he suddenly realised.

The gigantic pasty became two very large pasties and miraculously tasted pretty good.

The next morning I found the ‘Man with a Pan’ recipe cards I had bought him for Christmas (partly as a cheeky present, partly to possibly help!).

‘Did you get these out to help you make the pasties?’ I asked.

‘Yeah I got the dough recipe from them’, he replied coyly.

‘That is adorable’, I said and gave him a loving embrace. His sweet determination to turn the gruelling meal into something edible was commendable and not to be ignored.

‘Next time I make a bad casserole I can turn it into a pie!’ he said. I did have a silent chuckle.

Mouldy filo pastry

Strawberries

Sugar

1-2 Eggs

Stew strawberries and add sugar, cut off mould from pastry, cover strawberries with pastry then cover pastry with egg

In an attempt to be creative and different with the meals that month, my man had purchased some filo pastry to trial. A little got used for a savoury dish and the rest of the lump left to it’s own devices in the fridge had started to grow legs and try to escape the abandonment. My man feeling that such an ‘exotic’ ingredient was going to be binned came to the rescue one afternoon and in a creative flare that would have shamed Ray Mears, decided on strawberry flans. Enter myself halfway through this endeavour.

‘Erm….what is the green patches on the side of the pastry’, I asked with a long-suffering sigh.

‘It’s just a bit of mould, you won’t even taste it when it’s cooked’, he declared full of gusto at his daring escapade.

Carefully I said, ‘ Maybe you could cut off the mouldy bits?’

‘Do you think? Ok, there will still be enough pastry for the tarts’, he declared, ‘ I’m only making a top layer with it.’

‘Great’, I said, as enthusiastically as could be mustered with the prospect of culinary chaos, helpfully adding, ‘ you could brush the pastry with egg yolk to make it go brown.’ It was in this benevolent adage I wrought the tarts ruin. In the course of that dialogue, ‘egg yolk’ had become a simple ‘egg’ which became a whole two eggs poured on to the strawberry tartlets.

Later after dinner, the ‘piece de resistance’ was presented proudly to me.

‘Thanks darling, this looks great’, I lied. Forcefully as I could, it was nearly impossible to put a spoon through the pastry which was set with fried on egg. We sat in silence that speaks louder than words, and picked up the pastry in an attempt to chew it.

‘Mmmm fried egg strawberry mouldy tart’, I finally voiced. Laughing made it impossible for either of us to eat any more.

Ingredients:

Potato

Pasta

Breadcrumbs and little else

Mix together and bake in an oven

In the first year of marital bliss, the thorn in our side was an income that a mouse alone could survive on. Our staple foods consisted of pasta, potato, bread and porridge and in fairness they fill you up! Me and my man shared the cooking more in these early days. Some meals were good, some were average and some were eventually to become inspiration for stories….

One winter night I arrived home to find a dinner prepared and in the oven. This was good, ‘I have a modern man’ I thought, he didn’t expect me to do all the cooking and that’s great.

‘So honey what’s cooking?’ I asked, just interested in what he had concocted.

‘It’s a pie!’ he said proudly, ‘I used the left over pasta and added other ingredients’.

‘Oh’, I said, but started to wonder how pasta and pie are unanimous. Not wanting to doubt my man’s abilities or his ‘modern man’ ways, said ‘That’s great!’

When properly heated, the dish appeared from the oven. It looked Ok, I was pleasantly relieved. I relaxed as it was dished up and brought to me in the lounge on a tray.

‘So….’, I said, ‘that’s potato in it?’

‘Yes, I cooked the potato first and mashed it up’, he said as he munched happily.

‘…and that looks like bread on top?’ I queried.

‘Yes I crumbled up bread crumbs on top of the potato to make it go crispy. I got that, but what I didn’t understand was the lack of anything other than pasta, potato or bread!

‘…so this is basically pasta with mashed potato and breadcrumbs?’

‘Yes it’s potato pasta pie’, he said confidently.

‘Have you heard of the Atkins diet? This is basically the opposite of that!’ I said bewildered. I ate trying to have a thankful heart, but knew that I would have to introduce a little nutritional training into the home.